1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to computer-implemented database systems, and, in particular, to a fully integrated architecture for user-defined search.
2. Description of Related Art
Databases are computerized information storage and retrieval systems. A Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) is a database management system (DBMS) which uses relational techniques for storing and retrieving data. Relational databases are organized into tables which consist of rows and columns of data. The rows are formally called tuples or records. A database will typically have many tables and each table will typically have multiple tuples and multiple columns. The tables are typically stored on direct access storage devices (DASD), such as magnetic or optical disk drives for semi-permanent storage.
In some conventional systems, such as a geographical information system, a database may contain user-defined data, such as audio, video, image, text, spatial data (e.g., shape, point, line, polygon, etc.), time series data, OLE documents, Java objects, C++objects, etc. In some conventional geographical information systems, when a database includes user-defined data, the RDBMS is unable to understand the user-defined data. Therefore, in these conventional geographical information systems, an interface is provided between the geographical information system and a RDBMS that enables manipulation of user-defined data. In particular, the interface receives a query containing user-defined data constraints. The interface transforms the query into one that can be understood by the RDBMS. When the RDBMS returns data, the interface transforms the data into data that can be understood by the geographic information system.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for an improved architecture for database systems that enables a data base system to understand and manipulate user-defined data.